


Magnum Mysterium

by lasersforeyes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel True Forms, Castiel's True Form, Character Death, Heavy Angst, M/M, Romantic Angst, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 03:32:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2492876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasersforeyes/pseuds/lasersforeyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel reflects on the mysteries of mortality and love while trying to save Dean Winchester from the Mark of Cain.  (Spoilers through 10x02)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magnum Mysterium

This is how it goes. The story has a beginning, a middle, an end. It's very human in that way; angels have never needed narratives, denouements, plot devices, points of view. For them, there may have been a beginning, but there are no middles nor ends – only patterns, repeating endlessly, beautiful fractals of spacetime like planets around suns, suns in the arms of galaxies, galaxies dancing slowly around each other in local groups, globular clusters, universes. In the heavens and on the earths, lives come into being, and pass through periods of darkness, and go on being. It is part of what every angel knows, deep in itself. It is part of the great pattern of existence, which they serve. But this story is not like that. It is eternal, Castiel thinks, only in the way that its elements are eternal. There are heroes. There are father-figures. There is death, love, betrayal, redemption. There is sacrifice. There is a resolution. Of course, in its way, this story _is_ part of a pattern, which is part of another pattern, and another. All things are. To an angel, this story should be as dear and as distant as any other – the lives described as precious and as generic. The events should merely be watched over, the souls shepherded, celebrated, and released into the Heavens. But Castiel no longer thinks that way. He is not able to. He has become part of the story.

The story is six years long. Castiel knows enough about human mythology now to realize that time has relatively little bearing on an epic; the complexities, emotions, and events of a story can take six months or six centuries to culminate. Life and death in the span of millennia or the span of an afternoon. Six years. To an angel, less than the blink of an eye, less than the beginning of the cycle of one breath. To an angel, an eternity, a lifetime. Angels never used to think of time, except as an abstraction, a medium gentle and inconsequential, like bathwater. Now, it is a river rapid. Castiel can feel it rushing and roaring all around him, dragging at his limbs, the ruins of his wings as he sits in Heavenly council and listens to the debate about the ethical practicability of interfering in the Case of Dean Winchester.

Castiel is stiff, sore, angry, doesn't even want to be here, but Hanna implored him to give the Host a chance to decide to help him.

You can't do this alone! She said. 

You're dying, she did not say, but it was certainly heavily implied. Castiel doesn't think that Hanna really knows what that means. He doesn't think  _he_ really knows what that means. That is something else that angels don't do: engage in the process of dying. They exist, or they are destroyed. They don't  _linger,_ they don't fade, they don't evaporate slowly before everyone's eyes into a mist of vaguely angel-shaped light, then nothing at all. It's just not  _done._ No one in Heaven has the slightest idea what to make of Castiel's condition, but analyzing their reactions roughly by halves, they either want to kill him outright or start force-feeding him grace to see if that helps. Not that anyone has brought the subject up to him directly. Castiel is pretty sure that they suspect either option would illicit a distinctly negative reaction from him, and so at the moment, the council is trying to pretend he's not there. It's easier said than done, apparently, because Tariel's wing-eyes keep staring at him even while Tariel's face-eyes stare resolutely straight ahead at Hanna, who currently has the floor. Castiel stares back at Tariel's wing-eyes, rudely. He considers showing them his lion-face, but he's too weary to muster it. Instead he slowly and gruesomely draws his tattered wings around himself and lets their infected, half-blind eyes horrify Tariel's wings into shuddering and looking away.

The Host has been guiding Dean Winchester's life since the initial Apocalyptic attempt! Hanna is saying. There is no reason to turn away now, especially not when his Fate has become so...entangled with that of one of our own!

It is the wrong tack to take.

Castiel threw away his position in our ranks when he embraced mortality and Free Will! Zazagel all but shouts, erupting promptly into flames. Rachiel, Tariel, Jegudiel, and Morael all nod their agreement. Part of Castiel agrees, too, and wonders if Hester, so long ago, hadn't been right.  _When Castiel first laid hand on you in Hell,_ she had told a stunned Dean Winchester,  _he was lost._

Hanna is clearly flustered, her slowly healing wings puffed in consternation. But support comes from an unexpected quarter in A'albiel, a warrior who was one of Michael's closest lieutenants.

Don't demonize Free Will and mortality, brother. He says calmly. They, too, are part of the Plan. A'albiel alone deigns to look directly at Castiel, and in his eyes are the sorrows of old stars. It is not Castiel who has lost his way, he says. It is the Host entire. When we attempted to seize hold of the Plan and make it our own, did we not sin first?

The Host is the engine of the Heavens, Tariel reasons. If the Creator meant us to have Free Will, he would have given it to us. Instead, he gave us the reins of the Heavens, the Plan itself, to guide. We only did as was written!

And humanity, with its gift of Free Will, resisted that Plan, Castiel says, startling everyone. Perhaps they assume dying means losing the ability to speak for oneself. In the persons of Dean Winchester and his brother, he continues, humanity told us exactly where to stick that Plan. Isn't that the privilege of Free Will? Maybe we're just taking it badly that we were defeated, that all the machinations of Heaven were no match for two boys and their stubbornness.

There is an uncomfortable rustling of wings. Zazagel and Jegudiel look like thunder. Hanna looks like a cornered dove. Morael and Tariel look at the floor. A'albiel looks out at the skies, his mouth a thoughtful fiery line.

I should go, Castiel growls. The proclamation is lessened in its impact by the fact that he cannot fly, so he stalks out of the Heavenly hall with his broken wings as ruffled as he can make them.

 

* * *

 

It is difficult to describe what loss of flight means to an angel. It is more than restricted mobility; it is the loss of a way of seeing, a deadening of certain senses, like permanently damaged nerves, or amputated limbs. It is blindness, deafness, a mouth that wishes to cry out but cannot. It is a surgical removal of joy. It is, at the very least, a severe tactical handicap.

Castiel can no longer fly, so he walks. He walks among the footless pillars rising from the mist of an endless sea of light. He feels himself a painful darkness in all that light, a twisted, useless thing alone in all the Heavens, in all Creation. His wings ache and burn in his shoulders.

He thinks of Dean and his fear of flight. He thinks of Dean and his fear of things bigger than himself, of vast distances that cannot be cut into the number of miles that a 1967 Chevrolet Impala can cover in a day, in two days, in three. Dean who believes he has never seen an angel's true form. Dean who jokes about dicks with wings and calls Castiel “little” in order to bring him into some sort of acceptable relation to himself, to his earthly body, that thing which Castiel himself so painstakingly recreated while its soul clung to him like a child and did not want to let go.

Where does the story really begin, wonders Castiel. With that miraculous resurrection? With Dean's death and descent into Hell? With Dean's birth? With a prophecy written down centuries before? Or with a Fall, eons before Lucifer plummeted through the planes of a verdant young world with the light of Morning, a Fall that Castiel remembers still so clearly, as though a light were being lit within the Earth, as though, with the touch of two fingers to a wondering simian face, a fire was lit in the head of Man? Castiel trembles. _It's too big._ Dean would say. _It's too much._ And Castiel, flightless, thinks he finally understands that awesome shivering terror.

This is not the story he tells Dean. Not yet. He attempts to begin with the beginning that is tucked in his heart like a bird in a nest. Sprawled in a folding chair beneath a dripping cement ceiling, sprawled panting a little for breath that comes more and more haltingly these days, watching salamanders of pale light crawl across the face of a being that is trying to be Dean Winchester and trying not to be Dean Winchester, the rotating fan above him creak, creak, creaking as it fights its way through an air close and thick as mud in a tomb, Castiel asks, Do you remember Hell?

Dean-and-not-Dean looks startled for a moment, chained to his metal chair, feet bound, hands bound, chest and waist bound, neck bound. The metal chains and collars have words inscribed on them, filthy words that make Castiel's skin crawl. Make his heart hurt. Those words should not be clamped around the skin of Dean Winchester, skin that, at thirty-six, has fewer scars than it should have, supple, dappled, cared-for because Dean, despite what he might feel, has never been totally alone. Has never been where family could not lunge and grasp him, drag him back from whatever precipice of danger or self-hatred he was contemplating, has never been, even _there_ , in That Place, where an Angel of the Lord was not falling like a dagger, like a plunging hawk, from the Heavens to find him.

Not-Dean grins and makes his eyes flash black, just to piss Castiel off. Remember Hell? He sneers. Baby, I _am_ Hell.

Castiel sighs irritably. Don't do that, he admonishes. That was ridiculous, even by your standards.

Not-Dean-or-maybe-Dean doesn't stop smirking. Maybe so, he admits. But it's pretty true at this point, isn't it?

Castiel leans forward with greater effort than he feels should be necessary, and scrubs the corners of his eyes with thumb and forefinger. His eyes are gritty. They are bloodshot and they hurt. How can _eyes_ hurt, he wonders. O the mysteries great and small of the human form.

No, Dean, he says patiently. It wasn't true then, and it isn't true now. I'm not sure why you're being so insistent. But that's not the point. Do you remember Hell? Or rather, _what_ do you remember of Hell?

I gotta say, Cas, if this is your Great Inquisition, you gotta do better than that. You were a soldier of Heaven once – didn't they teach you how to torture better than that? Oh wait...that's right. You used to make _me_ do it.

And I said I would never do it again, and I didn't, Castiel interjects.

Dean snorts. He tries to turn his head away, but the cruel collar keeps him from doing so. Castiel's hands itch with the desire to tear it off of him. Believe me, Dean says bitterly, getting me to torture again would have been among the _least_ of fucked-up things you ended up doing.

That's not true, Castiel says. That would have been worse. It would have been much worse.

 

* * *

 

Angels are made of memory. Or rather, angels are made of stuff in which thought takes its purest form, and memory is thought, and so angels, the bottom line is, never forget anything. To make an angel forget requires a perversion of the forces of the Universe at which even Lucifer would shudder. Such perversions include, but are not limited to: torturing the angel by ripping out bits of it, which is incredibly difficult and also incredibly torturous to the one doing the ripping as well as to the angel; and ingesting the essence of the Old Ones from the Great Abyss, among those Leviathan, whose very metaphysical make-up is one of _lacunae_ , absences, negations, emptiness, void.

Before either of those things happened to Castiel, he went to Hell. And so Castiel remembers every second of every eon spent fighting through the mountains and iron cities, diving plunging like a stooping hawk through the sulfur air, an arrow shot from the heart of Heaven, to raise the Righteous Man from Perdition. For all intents and purposes, Castiel thinks, this is where the story begins. And fittingly, terribly, it begins with a Choice.

Back in the Heavenly council, no one has yet mentioned this Choice, although A'albiel was there, and so were Rachiel, Aftiel, and Isda. Choice is a fairly sticky subject for angels. It's not that they are incapable, but rather that their choices reflect only a relatively narrow range of options considering their heavenly purview, or maybe because of it. And Castiel's Choice, his first, fundamental Choice, could theoretically be seen as falling under the umbrella of Prophecy.

Regardless of his regrettable actions, Morael is musing now, Castiel could be considered the _de facto_ guardian of the Winchesters, particularly Dean. This guardianship was essentially set in place with the mission to Hell, and as the entire Plan was thwarted thereafter, as you say Hanna, by the application of Free Will, no particular end date to Castiel's guardianship has been established. Especially, she adds, with a note of pique, since the Winchesters seem to have trouble staying dead.

Exactly the problem, fires Zazagel, flexing his wings in irritation. It's against the Order of things! Free Will is one thing, and understandable in the context of humanity, but to defy the greater Order, humans require Otherworldly or Celestial help. And I think we all know where _that_ leads, he finishes, glaring at Castiel.

The truth is, Castiel has no good argument for that. Even after everything, he is still an angel, and so he can see the dark and winding path of his own decisions, stretched and curled through the dimensions of Time and Space like a wound. Occasionally, the thought occurs to him to wonder whether their absent Creator, in some fit of artistic sadism, hasn't indeed scripted this path for him, but it's too messy – too destructive and disordered and profane (and sublime) – to make any sense. And the Creator, whatever His faults may end up being, surely still makes sense, doesn't He?

And Castiel thinks briefly, too, of one of the first Fallen, a mighty angel named Samael, who in fighting against his punishment, was grievously wounded and blinded by Michael, and now roams insane through the dark reaches. His name means _blind god_ , and Castiel wonders for a single blasphemous moment if maybe the Creator is more like Samael: damaged, wounded in the brain, lost and raving.

I think we're all missing another fairly obvious point here, says Hanna, switching tactics. Regardless of what you think about Free Will and Choice and Prophecy, the fact remains that we have a new, burgeoning Knight of Hell on our hands, perhaps under Crowley's command, or even worse, gone rogue. Surely it's our responsibility to prevent his rise!

Then the solution would be simple, Tariel states. We kill him.

No.

They turn as one to look at Castiel, who has risen to his full height, though the movement tears at something inside. I will not allow it, he says.

You will not _allow_ -?

Dean isn't a demon. Not yet. But if you kill him now, his soul will go to Hell, and I won't let that happen.

Castiel-

I raised Dean from Perdition on Heaven's command! I healed him and I helped him, and I rebelled with him against the _insane_ idea of commencing an Apocalypse on the earthly plane, and I died and was brought back for him, I returned to Hell to fetch his brother, risking the wrath of Lucifer and Michael, and I battled Raphael to prevent another pointless Apocalypse, I tried to remake _Heaven_ so that his world would not be destroyed, and if you think I won't descend to Hell again to save him, you clearly don't know how seriously I take my guardianship!

His anger uncorks theirs.

You _decimated_ Heaven, Castiel! It's a wonder you're still alive!

You are paying for your sins, Castiel, and all because of Dean Winchester!

You have let him destroy you!

You _chose_ him!

 

* * *

 

The way it happened was this. It began with a Prophecy, as many stories do, but to understand what this means, it helps to understand that Prophecy is more of an art than a science, and a somewhat finicky art at that. Prophets, like any artists, have varying levels of skill at their craft, and certainly, through the centuries of recorded history there have been any number of useless, shoddy, outrageous, or just plain false Prophecies. Most of these barely catch the attention of passing spirits, let alone that of an angel. Some of them are nothing more than an extraordinarily good grasp of the wiles of probability. But even true or guiding Prophecies aren't exact in their quality. A Prophet, granted through whatever means a glimpse into a small piece of the workings of the Universe not only must struggle to translate into human language what they have seen, but also to provide for its greatest possible success – a little like casting a net wide enough to catch an elusive fish without dragging in too much flotsam and jetsam. Thus, Prophecies tend towards the hopefully vague, or the multiplicitously specific.

 

The Prophecy that caught the attention of the Angels in the case of the recent Apocalypse had some good built-in redundancy and helpful ambiguity. Most angels involved tended to view the killing of Lillith as the First Seal of the Sixty-Six, but in reality, the proper order of Seals was a bit more flexible than that, just in case something embarrassing happened, such as there being no one presently alive on Earth capable of doing the deed. A good Prophecy is one that gives as much a fighting chance to the side of Good (nebulously and often culturally defined) as it does to the side of Evil (likewise). This is to prevent interference with Free Will, though of course both sides are allowed a certain amount of stacking the deck before it qualifies as cheating. And so, with this Prophecy, there were actually _seven_ Righteous Men in Hell at the appropriate time, and any one of them would have done, given the imprecise nature of translations, and human language in general.

 

In fact, the Winchester line was _not_ particularly favored for the event, but only by a small margin. It was really anyone's game. What Castiel did wasn't actually against the Prophecy, nor was it against the (then-perceived) Heavenly Order, but it _was_ against his own direct orders, and he doesn't know, _still_ doesn't know, six earthly years, three deaths and one impending death, thousands of soft speechless moments and thousands of hard bitter warlike moments, hundreds of bouncing slow and awkward car rides, millions of caught and released breaths – some unnecessary and some not – and two self-caused Celestial tragedies later, why exactly he did it.

 

It is a mystery he ponders from time to time, more frequently now as the days in the Northern Hemisphere get slowly shorter and the light begins to take on a slightly bitter flavor. As his aching, brittle, broken wings go feverish, then numb; as his true form huddles deeper inside his vessel like a child trying to return to some fragile and rotting womb.

He ponders it sitting in the rickety folding chair with the fan creak creak creaking overhead sending those salamanders of light skittering across Dean-and-not-Dean's shadowed, hollowed face.

Maybe this is what I wanted all along, maybe-Dean says, and there is a serrated edge to his voice, meant to drag backward through Castiel's skin, open the wounds a little further.

I doubt that, answers Castiel.

Oh yeah? Then why are you keeping me chained down here? Free Will, Cas. If this is what I choose, then it's my choice and you should just kill me. If it's not what I choose, you should let me go and we'll all hug and sing Kumbaya and have a good cry.

Castiel snorts softly as sweat, warm and slimy, works its way in tiny rivers down his back and sides. His vessel has been sweating like this for two days now. He can't sleep. It's truly unpleasant. It has occurred to me over the years that Free Will, he says, is much more complicated than at first glance.

Maybe-Dean barks a laugh, sounding for a moment almost like Dean. Freedom ain't free, right, Cas?

Exactly.

There are dark spots down the front of Dean's t-shirt. He is sweating, too, though it's not especially warm in the dungeon. The Mark on his arm is swollen and bright red as though infected. Occasionally, Castiel will rise from his chair with effort and limp over to Dean's chair where it sits beneath the shaft of light, surrounded by the pale glow of a modified Devil's Trap, and place his hand on the Mark. Sometimes this makes Dean thrash angrily as though trying to fight him off and sometimes this makes Dean crack a snarky, off-color joke, and sometimes this makes Dean laugh nastily at him and mock his waning power, and sometimes this makes Dean do nothing but sit in silence, breathing.

Dean may not be entirely Dean at the moment, but Dean's body is entirely Dean's body, and like all bodies, it has its own purpose, which is to live and survive and carry the soul inside of it through the length of a mortal life. Dean's body is fighting the infection that is the Mark, the infection that is Dean's soul's anger and confusion and self-loathing and fear. Dean moans, then laughs, and his eyes in the inconstant light are bright slices of green. Castiel wants to go to him, he wants to touch him, to put his vast and starry wings around him and push grace through every vein until all the darkness is expunged. But he cannot. He is taken by a fit of coughing instead, pinning his vessel to its chair like a giant oppressive hand and stirring up a thick sea of gunk in the bottom of his lungs.

What do you really want, he asks when the fit passes.

I want you to let me outta here, possibly-Dean snarls.

Why?

Dean-and-not-Dean falls silent. The black eyes, the hatred and fear, aren't very good with _why._ It drives them mad, and indeed, Dean strains against his bonds, which makes Castiel's already tight chest feel tighter, a sick lurching feeling in his diaphragm as he watches the cruel manacles and collars cut into Dean's skin. When Dean calms, breathing a bit roughly through bitten lips and flared nostrils, trickle of blood on his bare wrist, he stares back up at Castiel.

Look at you, Dean says finally. You're trapped here as much as I am, Cas, you're like a bird in a cage, and that cage keeps getting smaller. Soon it's gonna crush you completely. So how about this. You let me out, and I go hunt down Metatron or whatever angelic douchenozzle has your mojo, and I get it back for you. Boom. Win-win.

No, Castiel says softly. Not like this.

The silence huffs and sweats like an angry beast. The fan creak creak creaks and the light skitters away across Dean's cheekbone and drags a hand across his damp chest. The Devil's Trap glows with grace and the Mark burns and burns.

You told me once, Dean growls low. 'You can't save everyone,' is what you told me. So what is it, then, Cas? Are you a hypocrite because you're arrogant, or because you're stupid?

 

* * *

 

 

After the altercation in the Heavenly council, Castiel removes himself. He bristles with red anger and a deep, blue-purple hurt as he wanders again out into the edges of the sea of light.

Please give me a little more time, Hanna begged just before he stormed off. And please stop antagonizing them. It's not helping.

They don't want to help – can't you see that? He snarled. They want to sit around for an age and talk about why I'm wrong and they're right and everything should just go back to the way it was!

Nothing can go back to the way it was, Hanna said.

Because of you, Hanna didn't say, but Castiel knows it. Knows it like a thorn in his heart, like a stone in his belly. He leans against a pillar of air and closes most of his eyes and tries to feel the certainty of Heaven wash through him, but all he feels is a lonely, empty space inside, like a hand cupped for rain that will never come. He turns away from the sea of light and limps up the etheric mountain pathways toward the Garden.

In the Garden, tending to a neat little bed of infants' dreams, is Joshua. Castiel watches the ancient one from behind a tree, suddenly wary of revealing himself even though the reason that anyone goes to the Garden is to talk to Joshua.

Joshua has been many things, since the beginning of Time. Castiel didn't know him very well before humanity; Joshua has always been mysterious, neither angel nor God, and some say that he was part of the Universe before even the Creator came about. Joshua has been, among other things: a giant fish deep in the primeval sea, an eagle of great wisdom, a stag in the forest, a woman who sailed over the horizon, a half-man who loved wine and song, a consumptive child who wrote poetry for the homeless and nameless, a prince who gave away all his earthly wealth and lived beneath a tree, a mystic who was executed for speaking about Truth, and an old Black man who saw the future. It is in the latter guise that he appears now, and seems to favor appearing most times.

Hello, Castiel, says Joshua. Are you going to come out from behind that tree?

I'm...afraid I'm not much to look at right now, Castiel says, suddenly embarrassed, and his voice, which once could crack mountains in two or raise oceans or sing civilizations to sleep is rough and hoarse and quiet.

Everybody's something to look at, reasons Joshua, and slowly, Castiel steps out from behind the tree.

Joshua looks at him, as pleasant and mild as morning, and Joshua smiles, but doesn't say anything. He steps back and looks happily at the bed of dreams. Castiel looks too and feels a sad kind of peace. It stretches around them like a sheet held overhead by two giggling children, full of air and dewy, soft light. Into this peace, which for a moment makes the pain inside him burn less, Castiel formulates a question.

Joshua, you – you have been among humans for a long time. You've seen them do many good things, and many, many terrible things. They've often tortured and killed you. Yet you always return. You always... _try._ Why?

Joshua looks at Castiel again, looks at his pale, drawn faces, his broken, sick wings, his gaunt, guttering light. He looks at the great heart still whirling and turning within Castiel, the engine of the angel, struggling not to skip a beat, fighting to pump what grace he has throughout his body. Joshua nods.

Because they are our little siblings, Castiel. He shrugs a shoulder, and gestures at the glittering, gentle, boundless expanse of the Garden around them. They came from the water, you came from the stars, but really, we are all made of the same things. They are part of Everything the way you are part of Everything, and they enact their part in mortal lives with immortal souls, and you enact your part on the other side of mortality, and we all work for the same thing.

Castiel's beaten wings sag further and his head lowers. He looks at the tiny, shimmering infants' dreams and the soft breathing eternal grass whose blades are each a moment in time, and despite Joshua's words he feels more alone than ever. I think I've lost sight of what that is, he murmurs.

But Joshua smiles, a big smile that changes the geography of his brown face like a river creating a new delta, and he puts his hand on Castiel's ribs, right over his churning heart. No, you haven't.

I have sinned, Castiel argues. And my sins are terrible.

Most sins are terrible, when they get to the point of really being considered sins.

I'm an _angel_ , and yet I've split open Purgatory, wrought havoc on Earth, and nearly destroyed Heaven!

Yes, well, you angels have always been a bit more chaotic than you give yourselves credit for. Especially when you get a wild hair.

I should have kept sight of the bigger picture, Castiel continues relentlessly. I should have remembered the greater good.

And what, exactly, is the bigger picture and the greater good? To keep alive a civilization that's lasted for a half a breath long on Earth? To make sure the sun rises each morning and sets each evening? To keep the Devil in Hell and God in Heaven?

Um. Yes? Castiel ventures, slightly flummoxed.

Joshua shakes his head. Let's look at facts, he says. You know as well as I do that the planet we're so fond of is one of approximately seventy five billion sentient-life-bearing planets in this galaxy alone. Seven billion of those are currently nearing the end of their run, incinerated by exploding stars or turning to ice after the slow extinguishing of their suns. About two billion are torn apart at any given moment by global war, another two billion, let's say, by interplanetary war. The vast majority haven't evolved life capable of language yet. Half to two-thirds of those will expire by asteroid, supernova, gravity well, ice age, or collision with another massive celestial body before they even have the chance. Statistically, the gods of the Creeping Dark will claim around twenty percent of life-bearing planets in the end, and the forces of Hell will claim another twenty to twenty-five percent entirely. And then let's factor in Free Will. Because it is essential to any sentient mortal species, Free Will adds an element of chaos, uncertainty, confusion. Pain. Excitement. Joy. Let immortal souls evolve from star stuff and inhabit mortal bodies, and they will bring you war, disease, sexual ingenuity, climate catastrophe, colonization, rape, enslavement, musical triumph, architectural astonishment, ways to prolong life, ways to brutally end it, poetry, profanity, child abuse, child prodigies, dreaming, dancing, slaughter of their fellow beings. Prayer. Writing. Grief. Wisdom. On Earth, you've had all of that just within the last few hundred thousand years. How many end times? How many wars? How many spiritual revivals? And how many more to come, on and on until old Sol goes bang and swallows them up, if they even last that long? This is the bigger picture, Castiel, and these are all things that you know, and you _know_ you know. So you tell me, in all that, why do _you_ keep going to Earth? Why do _you_ keep trying?

 

* * *

 

 

Castiel has died before, but he has never been _dying_ before. As previously mentioned, it's not really something that angels do. But when Hanna finally returns him to Earth, after the council and everything, and he makes his exhausted way to Kansas and the bunker and a grieving, angry, determined Sam, he walks into the dungeon where Dean (still Dean, in his mind, still and always and forever Dean) is restrained and for a moment he is suddenly certain, with a mortal animal's instinctual certainty, what dying feels like.

He sees the devil's trap (the first one, not the one he himself will create later), and he sees the iron chair and the manacles with their glowing, repulsive words, and the thin shaft of light and the creaking fan and the boxes of vials and bottles and syringes waiting in the corners and he sees the uplifted, beautiful, smiling face and the eyes black as black holes and he thinks o god something's breaking, something's really wrong, I can't breathe and something is stabbing down in there, and it keeps going, o god let it stop Why won't it stop? Why? Father father father why

 

* * *

 

In Hell, as in Heaven, things generally take whatever form they see fit, with the exception of things like angels, Fallen angels, and certain ancient beings who are what they are and usually don't see any reason to appear otherwise. Souls have a bit more leeway, having been designed with a greater capacity for change. This results in some truly creative interpretations of form – Castiel has seen demons that are nothing but giant eyes on legs, or spirals of teeth, or tattooed ogres with mouths for stomachs. It also results in some less-inspired designs, but in all, demons are terrible and nightmarish because they know themselves to be terrible, and Hell is their eternal nightmare.

In Hell, the demon Alistair is a towering horror made of tiny, deformed batlike creatures, a face like a vaguely humanoid bear skull, and great, jointed spiderlike limbs formed from tortured sinew. His hands are long and skeletal, deft and elegant, if elegance came draped in rotting flesh and tipped with steel claws. In each of the ten hands he has, Alistair holds an implement of torture or a weapon. Castiel holds a sword of starfire in one hand, and nothing in the others. Alistair is no match for him, and retreats from the twisted iron tower that hangs in the bronze-colored sky where he has been teaching his student how to flay the souls of the damned with the utmost interminable precision.

In Hell, Dean looks like Dean.

Dean is barefoot, shirtless, scarred terribly on every inch of flesh that shows. Dean's skin is dark with blood and sulfuric soot and gore. Dean has been carefully extracting long skeins of a soul's imaginary nerves and pinning their ends to the walls and ceiling while leaving them rooted in the soul's imaginary body. The effect is like a delicate, lacework tent of red, screaming pain. Dean holds the implements of his craft in human hands, rather than fusing them into his fingers as many do. Dean's face is a grim mask. Dean's body is slightly twisted, like an image in a faulty mirror. Dean's eyes are bright slices of green, like dew-soaked grass, in the endless browns, blacks, greys, reds reds reds of Hell.

He looks at Castiel. He doesn't drop his knife but he doesn't wield it either. His mouth, cracked, opens painfully, a soft cup of brittle, bloody hope.Don't be afraid, says Castiel. His heart is an engine, rotating quickly in its races with a sound like the sea.

What are you, says Dean, and he is not afraid.

To Castiel in that moment it seems as though the dense and turbulent air of Hell is briefly lifted, drawn aside like a pungent curtain, pierced by a singular shard of fierce white light. To him from distant Heaven comes the profound peace of certitude, the joyous, resounding benediction of his Choice. He thought, at the time, that it was God speaking.

 

* * *

 

 

This is part of the story he will tell Dean, eventually, but not yet. Castiel backtracks, starts with the things Dean also knows, about the gas station and the barn and all the things after that. He doesn't say, Once Upon A Time, or In Those Days, but instead he starts like human stories started in the beginning, circled around life-giving fires in the darkness, the sparks echoing the stars, human eyes looking across that protective ring of light into other faces, saying, Do you remember when...do you remember when...

Do you remember the night before we faced Raphael? Castiel asks.

Dean has been having what Sam and Castiel refer to as a Good Day. His eyes are green more than they are black. He trembles in his chair, his body remembering that it is actually not all that warm down here, that all that fire in his blood is due to the throbbing, raging, bloodthirsty Mark trying to snake its hot red tendrils up his arm and into his heart. He doesn't snarl and spit at the grace-infused air of his trap. His voice is slow and low, like he's drunk. He lets Castiel touch him. Castiel senses that some part of him is trying-to-be-Dean.

Trying-to-be-Dean's head is bent forward, chin resting against his sternum. His sandy hair is parted with skeins of sweat. At first he doesn't respond to Castiel's question and Castiel thinks maybe he has gone somewhere again, away from Castiel to some Sam memory or some memory that is purely his own. If so, Castiel will leave him for a while and walk in the woods behind the bunker, trying to breathe, trying to order his chaotic heart. But then, a husky sound comes out of trying-to-be-Dean's chest and he tips his head to one side a bit.

The look on your face, he says with a voice that reminds Castiel of when Dean has been drinking for a couple of days straight. He laughs again. Oh, man. Priceless.

Castiel's lips tick upward at one corner. You laughed all the way back to the house.

That's because that was some hilarious shit. Only you, Cas. Only you could _fail_ so phenomenally at getting laid in a whorehouse.

I was trying to connect with her.

Dean lifts his head, much like he did that night, though he still doesn't look directly at Castiel. Oh my God, he says, teeth white in the crescent curve of his smile. Oh my _God._ Please, please tell me that you gave her one of your creepy unblinking stares as you told her, and here he roughens up his voice in a clear mimic of what Castiel sounds like to him, “be not afraid. It is not your fault your father didst abandon his family, for lo, he didst hate his job at the Post Office.”

Castiel snorts, still smiling, chest full of that mixture of consternation and amusement that only Dean, among all of the confusing hordes of humanity, can fully inspire in him. I think I managed to sound a little more colloquial than that, he protests. And besides, I could sense she was unhappy. I didn't think it was fair for her to have to try to make me happy when she was so unhappy herself.

Dean chuckles softly again, but his smile changes shape. Yeah, well. That's part of your problem, isn't it, Cas? Once you started caring about humanity instead of running all over the place being a great big heavenly dick in your Dad's name, you didn't know how to stop. You cared too much. And it broke you.

Castiel feels a thick discomfort in his sternum, like the pressure of a puncture wound before the pain. He lowers his gaze from Dean's profile, caressed by pale brightness, gaunt-looking.

I could say the same about you.

Do you remember, he thinks, do you remember how you gave up your life for your brother, the only family you had left. How you fought Lucifer with sticks and stones, how you spit in the faces of angels to keep Sam and Bobby and your world safe. How you cried alone in the dark, nails dug into your scalp, body spasming with your desperation, when you thought no one was watching you? And do you remember Sam by your beside when you were hurt, his eyes drowning in the fear of losing you, and do you remember I soothed your nightmares of Hell, do you remember I took them all away to see your face become lax and young with sleep?

God, we're a pair, aren't we, Cas.

Castiel raises his head and catches the green eyes with his own. Yes.

For a moment something stirs between them, instantaneous, like they are two entangled particles who without knowing why move at the same time, in the same direction. The pressure in Castiel's chest increases and his vision blurs at the edges.

So whaddyou say, Dean says quietly. I help you get your grace back. We see where this goes. We're a team. C'mon, Cas. You wanna put Hell in its place? I'm the guy to help you do it! We'll axe Crowley, wipe out all those Abbadon groupies, boom. You and me, Cas. You and me.

No, Castiel whispers, and the pain in his diaphragm blooms again, sudden and sharp.

Screw you, Cas! You wanna play the wayback game, how about this – remember when _you_ made a deal with Crowley? All the souls in Purgatory, huh, Cas? Man, you were best buddies then, and that was okay, because _you_ were right, weren't you? Always so damned sure you're right!

Castiel watches the quick angry rise and fall of Dean's chest as he shouts. The problem with Dean-and-not-Dean and maybe-Dean is that sometimes, they are all Dean, and sometimes they are right.

And you didn't give up on me, Castiel says into the ragged-breathed silence. You found a way to help me, to put those souls back.

So you wouldn't destroy the _freaking_ world! And then you almost did anyway, should have shoved you through that portal, too, you and your know-it-all, Leviathan-infected ass.

But you didn't.

Unfortunately.

I was wrong, Dean. I've been wrong a lot. You know that. But you forgave me. Do you remember that? You didn't give up on me, he repeats.

Should have. Dean's voice, shaking. Dean's soul, lost and gore-covered.

And I'm not going to give up on you.

Always so damn sure of yourself.

I'm not sure of myself at all, Castiel says between his teeth, keeping lungs and heart in place. I'm sure of _you._

 

* * *

 

 

An angel's faith is a very particular thing, Castiel tells Sam one day as they sit in piles of books and papers, two cooling coffee mugs buried somewhere, two old chairs mercifully conforming to the slump of their two tired spines. He ends up talking to Sam about angels a lot, when he first arrives in Kansas, hollow-eyed, falling-down, palsy-fingered, gravel-voiced. He talks to Sam about a lot of things as they spend those first days diligently and frantically poring over book after book, manuscript after manuscript. Translations of archaic Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Enochian, Sumerian, rolling off of Castiel's tongue. Notes hunted and pecked by Sam, one-handed, on his computer, scraps of prayer, bits of ritual, questions in bold that lead to yet more books and more manuscripts. Castiel making the coffee and bringing Sam food, making sure he eats. Sam watching Castiel get thinner and paler, listening to his coughing get worse, Sam's fingers clenching and unclenching. Sam's good hand on Castiel's shoulder, sometimes, a brief squeeze that says all of the words that Sam cannot. That Castiel doesn't know to.

How so? Says Sam, because no matter what is going on, Sam is always curious.

It could be said to be the opposite of human faith, in a way. Castiel puts aside a book on cursed objects and picks up one on cursed people. In humans, to have faith means to place belief and confidence in something that cannot otherwise be proven, seen, touched, heard. It is abstract, a way to surrender to the limits of one's knowledge without succumbing to despair.

In angels, he continues, faith is belief in God, in the Heavenly Plan, things that were always tangible to us in a somewhat physical way. Faith is what angels give to the Universe; it is their work, their love, their certitude. For an angel to say “I have lost my faith,” it means that their very world is broken, that something palpable and real has been torn from them, that they are injured, blinded, lost.

Sam is very, very quiet.

And have you? He asks at last. Lost your faith? That we can fix this, fix Dean?

Castiel looks at his hands, at how fragile and bony they look resting on the yellowed pages of an ancient manuscript. All of the tiny cuts on the knuckles and the bruises under two fingernails. No, he says slowly, but Dean has. The Mark is very powerful, very old. It may have culminated in the story of Cain and Abel, but it has its beginnings long before those two brothers lived on Earth. I believe that the Mark itself _is_ a loss of faith, somewhat more in the way that angels see it – it has to do with the destruction of something very fundamental to the human psyche. Something so powerful that, twisted, it morphed into a murderous rage. A desire only for vengeance.

He looks up at Sam.

It's a very _personal_ thing, the Mark of Cain. More than any other curse, perhaps, I believe it is capable of destroying what a person is, because it _is_ what they are, in a sense. It fits so seamlessly, so comfortably, into who Dean is that he barely even knows to fight it.

So how do we get him to fight it? Sam asks, eyes glazed in the light of his computer screen, clearly wishing that his cup of coffee wasn't lost beneath half a library's worth of books like Franklin's expedition beneath the arctic ice.

Maybe we give it what it wants, Castiel says. What it _really_ wants. We give it back the thing that broke it in the first place, that made it turn to evil.

 

* * *

 

 

Before he sits researching with Sam in the bunker in Kansas, before he is taken back to Earth by Hanna and driven to the Greyhound station, before he sees the demon-black eyes in the face of the Righteous Man in the dungeon, Castiel makes his way back from the Garden to the place where the council is meeting. Things have calmed down somewhat since his (again) blasphemous assertion of the primacy of Dean Winchester in all things, and Hanna is waiting for him to take him back into the great gilded hall so that he won't have to arrive, bedraggled and on foot, alone.

I apologize for my outburst, he says before anyone else has a chance to say anything. It was rude of me. I am...a bit on edge lately.

On the edge of what? Morael asks in confusion, tilting her head.

Castiel sighs.

Death, for one thing, he replies flatly. Everyone looks uncomfortable, and beside him Hanna makes a stifled groan of despair.

Sorry, Castiel mumbles.

It's...forgiven, A'albiel says graciously, smiling tentatively as though he's not entirely sure he should be using that word. We...have come to a decision, I believe. Rachiel?

Castiel turns, grimly expectant, to Rachiel, who tries heroically to look him in the face but gives up and begins pacing instead.

We agree that Free Will is a sacred concept granted to humanity, Rachiel says. And that it must be preserved in the mortal sphere, to the greatest extent possible.

Morael, Hanna, Jegudiel, and Aftiel firmly nod. Tariel flutters a little. Zazagel looks as though he'd like to throw Free Will, Castiel, discussions thereof, and councils in general off a cliff. A'albiel and Isda watch expressionless.

Dean Winchester's role in the Apocalypse, as well as the role of his brother, were part of Prophecy when they were... _re-written,_ and none of us can deny Castiel's role in that, but the choice did, as some have mentioned, mostly fall to Dean and Sam themselves. Despite Raphael's attempt to re-start the Apocalypse, the lives of Dean and Sam have been off-script since then. Free Will, indeed, won the day. But Castiel, Free Will was only ever the war prize of the _humans_ involved. It was never meant to extend to angels, and of course, it can't. We angels can never have Free Will because our power and purview are too great. Our choices too devastating. Look at the Fall of the Watchers. Look at Lucifer. Look at yourself. Angelic Free Will is a catastrophe, Castiel.

Hanna ruffles her feathers, but Rachiel gathers himself up, one wing still half-shorn from the recent Fall, and dares a glance into Castiel's eyes.

There is no longer a mandate that Dean Winchester be saved. Actually, there never was. If he is to be a Knight of Hell to replace Abbadon, whom he killed, then his fate is his own, formed by choices he himself has made.

After we _made_ him a pawn - !

No, A'albiel interjects slowly. It has to end, Castiel. The standard of Free Will has to reassert itself; it's what Dean himself would want. What he fought for. The right to be free, forever, of Heaven's design. If we save him from himself now, what's to say where we should stop? Should we cleanse every demon? Wage war on Hell itself? Erase all hint of evil from the Earth, scrub it clean of sins and downfalls and conflicts?

Something acid and scalding rises within Castiel, something that scorches the tender bearings of his heart like a scream, inchoate, unvoiced. He trembles where he stands.

_But we have done this to him!_

We withdraw, Zazagel says tersely. We quit the field. The retreat from our interference has to begin somewhere.

It takes everything within Castiel not to call down his sword of fire. The blasted tatters of his wings stretch wide, their chill clouds briefly cover a golden meadow in Austria and the children playing there shiver and look up.

You, says Isda, speaking for the first time. You, though, still have a choice.

A choice and not a choice, Castiel knows. To choose is to no longer be an angel. To no longer be an angel is to be without the power to heal Dean of his torment. No longer protect and guide, no longer shelter the tender fierce green soul that stepped into the shelter of his mighty wings in Perdition and was not afraid, not then, but trusted him so purely – not _angels_ , not _God,_ but _Castiel -_ to save him.

You know what I choose, croaks Castiel.

So be it, murmurs Tariel.

Hanna trembles in grief.

We release you, says A'albiel softly.

You may never return to Heaven, whispers Aftiel, the color of deep water.

You are free to try to save Dean Winchester's soul, says Morael, and each angel, even Zazagel, whether they fought against him or not, sings a song of grief at Castiel's leaving, for each angel is part of another, as all things are part of Everything.

As they go from the hall, Isda catches up to Hanna and Castiel.

Wait, says Isda.

They turn. Castiel remembers Isda from the beginning of the story he will tell Dean, from the mission to Hell. He remembers that Isda once narrowly escaped the blade of Castiel's sword in the chaos following the Apocalypse and his own deluded, albeit brief, godhood. He remembers that Isda was among the first to forgive him that egregious sin and welcome his reformed counsel. Castiel suddenly feels a deep sorrow.

I wanted to say, says Isda, that I agreed with the council not to interfere in the case of Dean Winchester. And...I'm sorry because of what that means for you. But I also wanted to say that I remember the Choice you made in Hell, Castiel. I was there, if you recall...close enough behind you that it might as easily have been I who reached him first. I didn't really understand, at the time, but I...I suppose I trusted you.

Neither looks at the other for a moment but instead turn faces outward to watch the dream of the Nile stretch unendingly into the hushful brilliant natal sea of light.

I saw the moment you Chose him, Castiel. And for what it's worth...I think, somehow, he chose you, too.

 

* * *

 

Hanna brings Castiel back to Earth. The children's playground where they emerge, ankle-deep in the sandbox, is empty today, which Castiel thinks is definitely for the best as for a moment the world swirls sickeningly around him, trees sky grass sandbox riding toys someone's bright inflatable rubber ball they left behind and he has to grasp onto Hanna's shoulder, swaying against her vessel like a ship floundering at sea. Her arms like iron hold him up and presently his vision clears, at least as much as it's ever going to. He finishes, agonizingly, fitting himself into his vessel for the last time, like squeezing a migraine with a shop vise. The lungs gasp faltering as he forces his pain into the body.

Castiel, Hanna murmurs and her voice is the heartbreaking sound of someone discovering loss for the first time.

I'm fine, he coughs, losing large black chunks of his vision with each chest-rattling expulsion of air and phlegm.

Her arms are around him and her fingers are digging brutally into his ribs.

I'll go with you, she says firmly.

No.

No more, he thinks. No more losing them like moths to the bright flame of an idea they cannot comprehend, no more of that fearsome, absolute angelic passion diverted like a wild river being dammed, channeled to someone else's purpose, someone else's dream. No more his name passed like an infection from mind to mind, killing some, inspiring others to madness. If they are to discover this feeling, it cannot be through me. It is a personal poison. Let it alone, leave it in the soft wet dark earth where you found it. No more.

But -

Hanna, he says. And she understands. Or at least, she obeys.

She drives the rental car the tow truck woman got for them to the nearest Greyhound bus station. Castiel insists. It's only a three hour bus ride to Kansas, only three hours in which to be alone with his mortality before he faces Sam and whatever remains of Dean. Hanna drives meticulously, quietly, but her silence is loud with questions and fears. She turns the air conditioning on and off twelve times, exploring its various combinations while Castiel's vessel shivers and then sweats, twitches and coughs.

Is this helping? She asks softly. She looks so lost.

_When Castiel first laid hand on you in Hell_ , Hester told Dean once. Poor Hester, he thinks. She didn't know what lost was. Lost is an angel with no way to protect, no way to heal, no way to help. Lost is Sam without Dean. Dean without Sam. Castiel without both of them. Lost is Castiel all the rest of his pure, fiery, eternal angelic life if he had done nothing more but change his direction, ever so slightly, nothing more than choose another righteous soul and leave the one with the grass green eyes behind. He smiles at Hanna, and then he laughs, very softly, or at least, he feels like laughing, but big salty tears are running down his face and something rips inside.

Pull over, he moans.

He throws up in the roadside ditch still wet with early fall rain. Aster and ground dogwood catch the worst of it, a sick, mucus-y, bloody substance mixed with whatever meager thing he last fed his vessel. He crouches above the ditch, coughing and gagging, tears running from his eyes and snot running from his nose and he groans and hiccups and sits back and wipes his nose on his sleeve and shuts his eyes.

Gentle hands encircle his waist and pull him to his feet. Hanna sets him upright and holds him there, peering worriedly at his face as though wondering if this is some critical part of dying or merely another unpleasant step on the way, and if so, what she should do about the situation.

It's all right, he tells her, and his voice shakes.

With some cautious attention paid to maneuvering, she puts one hand on the back of his head and leans him forward until his chin is on her shoulder. Is this right? She asks. Is this a hug? I think I should do that.

It's right, he says.

She hugs him, and his arms slide under hers and his stomach hurts terribly and he leaves a wet salty spot on her shoulder. When the hug is over, she steps back and looks critically at his face, then carefully and precisely wipes the tears off his cheeks, the blood and snot from his lips and nose, the saliva from his chin. Then she places her hand on his chest.

Don't argue, she says. This is a gift, freely given. It's rude to refuse a gift.

Grace flows into him like a river running, leaping, racing triumphant from distant mountain snowfall down into the arid plains. Grace speaking, grace murmuring and singing and sluicing and bounding, rippling over and through veins and capillaries, barreling through the crevasses and caverns of him, washing over stones and sand and scrub, seeping up through snarled thickets and pooling in deep holes. It limns the body entirely, for a fleeting moment, swelling the desert with the blessing of rain. Hanna's eyes are alight with it, gazing, open-mouthed, into Castiel's face, amazed as for a moment part of her and part of him exist together in his vessel. In all of time, very few angels have ever given away a part of themselves, ever taken out a piece and put it within another. When the flood dies down finally and retreats to its well within Castiel's vessel, two of the only five angels to have done so stand looking at each other in the wan light of an overcast autumn day.

Two tears run down Hanna's cheeks, and she dabs them with a fingertip, staring at them. Giving of herself to him, she is both a little less and a little more than she was before. She has seen, however momentarily, part of the defining mystery of his existence. In the days to come, she will often retreat to the Heaven of a mountain spring that is no more, and ponder this in her heart.

Slowly, her hand slips from his chest. Slowly, he stands a little straighter, awash with love and sorrow for her, his sister he will see no more, and feels the gifted grace coil warmly inside of him, gentling his fear. He blinks. She lets out a breath that her vessel instinctively held.

The car, he says.

What?

We should go get the car.

She starts and her eyes widen a little. Oh!

She remembered the part about the brakes but forgot to turn off the engine and put it in park, and, both front doors open, the car is trundling slowly down a slight incline on the shoulder of the road, humming mechanically to itself.

 

* * *

 

It has been a week of endless hours since Castiel arrived at the bunker to help Sam save Dean. A week of Sam consuming caffeine in all its forms to stay awake, dragging his laptop up and down the length of the bunker's prodigious library from C, curses and hexes, H, hexes and curses, P, prophecies and portents, Sy, symbols, Judeo-Christian, Sy, symbols, esoteric, Sp, spells and binding rituals, R, rituals, demonic, R, rituals, angelic, R, rituals, goetic, and back to C, curses; Castiel falling asleep fitfully amid the stacks of texts passed to him to interpret or translate, suffering Sam's distracted admonishment to get some real rest; the steely trepidation of their solitary visits to Dean.

Castiel slowly builds up his theory of the Mark of Cain. There is no presence within Dean, no possession by a foreign intelligence. Instead, he thinks, it is more like a symbiotic relationship – the Mark feeding itself off of what Dean gives to it, feeding Dean with a strength and rage that is blissful to his frightened soul, to a heart too used to being broken. It makes Dean into what part of him wishes he could be: a hunter with nothing to lose, a killer with nothing to protect. Castiel thinks that he can appreciate the feeling. Remembers being taken apart and reconstructed by Heaven, so long ago – down to cogs and wheels, the wrench in his works, faulty temper of his metal, cleansed of his lamentable affections and wrong-headed prejudices ( _I don't serve Man...and I certainly don't serve you)_ and later under Naomi's hand, an instant of blank relief when he could drive a sword through the chest of a simulated Dean and feel nothing.

_What broke the spell?_

Castiel also begins making a list of Things to Tell Dean.

He writes the list in the margins of the other notes he is taking, to help himself gather thoughts that are more and more frequently scattered by pain and weariness. What happened in Hell, is one item. Why angels don't like car rides. Why I like car rides now. What I first thought he meant when he said he wasn't going to let me die a virgin.

He ponders his list as he and Sam talk, over the books and coffee and infrequent breakfasts.

He'll never let go of thinking he needs to protect me, Sam says. He'll never stop needing to.

He tells Castiel, though Castiel already mostly knows, about the Yellow-Eyed Demon, and their mother, and their father. He tells Castiel about riding in the Impala, and the universal code of Sides of the Seat. About Dean sharpening Sam's first knife for him because Sam cut himself doing it and was scared to try again. About Sam doodling the devil's traps and hexes Dean taught him in class and getting in trouble with the teacher for drawing “satanic symbols.” About Dean sneaking him out of school at lunchtime to sit with Dad when Dad was hurt so Dean could go buy groceries. About Dean playing football with him in the front yard at Bobby's while Bobby stitched John up and they thought that he might maybe die this time. About how hurt and mad Dean was when Sam left for Stanford, and how Dean wrote him letters anyway that he never sent that Sam found later.

What Sam's soul looks like, Castiel adds to the list. Why I left it behind in the Cage (not an excuse, just how it happened).

Sam tells him about the first time Dean and Sam stole fireworks and how giddily terrified they both were when the big ones turned out way bigger than they'd thought.

What Bobby and Ellen and Jo's Heavens look like, Castiel notes. How to get there.

Oh man, and this one time Dean brought a girl to the motel, Sam says laughing. He hardly ever does that, even though he talks big, but this one time. And she turns out to be some kind of MMA expert and thinks I'm a burglar when I come back to the room and just about breaks my sternum. Oh man, Dean's face. Wasn't funny at the time, with being attacked and everything, but I must've teased him about that for three years straight.

That I watched him that year with Ben and Lisa, Castiel adds. That I think he would make a very good father, from what I understand of the requirements.

I mean, I guess I sort of get it, Sam says quietly. Family's just this really big weight you carry, all your life, but only because you're more afraid of losing them than anything else. He looks across at Castiel, shadows under both their eyes. Friends, too. The minute they're not a weight anymore is because you've lost them, and that's the worst thing that could happen. But it's kind of this fucked-up relief, too. You know?

Castiel nods.

Because you love them so much. Sam's voice, hoarse. Loving anyone feels like a great big weight when you know chances are they're gonna die before you're ready to let go.

That I'm going to die, Castiel adds to his list.

But then, loving people is really the only thing that makes doing what we do worth it, Sam finishes with sorrowful conviction.

That I love him.

 

* * *

 

And so he begins to tell Dean their story. Bits and pieces at a time. Do you remember when? Do you remember? To fill in the holes the Mark is trying to make, to build back what it is trying to destroy – the wholeness of a self, good and bad, joyful and painful. Brave and afraid. Fierce and kind. Loving and loved. He watches the ages of light play over Dean's face underneath the fan that never stops creak creak creaking. Watches the manacles dig into Dean's tender skin when he strains too much. Weathers Dean's cursing and mocking and laughing and crying out as he writhes in the emptiness the Mark is gouging into him.

Whatever you're trying to do, Cas, you and Sam, he says on the last day. Voice like whiskey, rough and trouble. I promise you, it's not worth it. I'm not worth it.

You don't really think that, Castiel tells him.

Oh yeah?

You don't hate yourself as much as you think you do, Dean. If you did, you would relish your own mistakes rather than castigate yourself for them. If you did, there wouldn't be a part of you yearning to be saved.

I don't wanna be saved, Cas. Not again.

Castiel tilts his head. You're a very experienced hunter, Dean. Your talents have been sharpened even further by the Mark, because it allows you to act without your usual conscience. And still, here you are. You let yourself be caught.

Maybe Sam just got lucky.

Maybe he did.

He's good.

Very. And he loves you.

Too much.

There's no such thing.

Dean contemplates Castiel, across their small hallowed distance. His fingers clench and unclench, working the long flat muscles of his forearms against his manacles, thumb rubbing over his knuckles back and forth. His upper teeth catch and release his lower lip, and then he looks away.

And what about you, Cas? Why're you here? Whiskey-rough. You're running outta mojo, you look like shit. You should be out there chasing down your grace.

It's gone, Castiel tells him.

Well then, you're stupid, and you're gonna die. A muscle in Dean's jaw twitches.

Yes. I am.

For _what?_ Dean laughs harshly.

For a Choice I made long ago, Castiel says.

 

* * *

 

When Castiel finally comes up with the plan, such as it is, it takes Sam a full two days to accept it. When Castiel first tells him, he stands up abruptly. He paces, he runs his uninjured hand through his hair again and again. He says, No. He says, There's got to be another way. He says, Cas.

But there's nothing for it, really. Castiel presents Sam with his theories on the Mark, and given both of their interactions with Dean, and all of their research, it makes sense. The Mark is parasitic, not demonic. It feeds off of the negative emotions – particularly jealousy, abandonment, fear of loss, despair – that already exist. It convinces the host (the host convinces themselves) that without things like conscience, tenderness, kindness, love, they would be better off. With each killing, the Mark is stronger, and it doses the host with a kind of joyless bliss, a preternatural power. Like a drug.

Then Castiel shows Sam a tiny, uneven book like a badly taxidermied bird, older than anything else in the library and still a copy of a copy of a copy, bound together more with the ideas of bindings than with actual bindings, brittle and dark. Sam cradles its idea of a spine in his hand, open to the page Castiel has marked. There, a picture of the symbol – a vague f-shape, a shallow swirl and two dashes. The Mark of Cain. Only, it is not.

Enochian? Says Sam.

Older, says Castiel. From the very first Fall of the angels, the Fall of the Watchers.

The Book of Enoch. Sam's eyes widen.

Castiel nods.

This came from angels? Sam is incredulous.

No, Castiel says. It came from pain.

 

* * *

 

Castiel gathers the stories he tells Dean as he walks laboriously through the woods behind the bunker. Not like the squirrels gather nuts and seeds for the winter, darting in quick whirling tufts through the underbrush, hunting them out, but like the forest floor gathers leaves from the trees that are steadily turning the fruits of their summer over to the shortened days, the oncoming cold. He lets the memories collect in his heart like golden leaves, like dew-drops on the still green grass. Their story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, unlike most things angels know. But he doesn't have to tell Dean everything in order. He thinks he will actually save the beginning for last. It's not the biggest thing they've been through together – Castiel thinks that aspiring to godhood and accidentally releasing Leviathan upon the Earth might contend in that category, after all – but it _is_ the beginning. The rain that falls on the mountain. The well that burbles deep in the throat of the rocks. It is _their_ beginning, the place where the angel Castiel enters the story of Dean Winchester and both of them are changed forever. And there is something sweet, perhaps, Castiel thinks, as his laboring lungs force him to lean against an alder tree to catch his liquid breath, in holding onto that beginning, here at the end.

And so he holds it, like a piece of green glass, presented to the shore by the sighing sea, a favorite treasure, clear and bright, and lets the other memories, the other stories, gather around it. He lets them shift and shimmer around him like feathers, soft echoes to the tiny remnant of Hanna's grace inside. As he watches them, one by one, he is aware of other thoughts, flashing furtive between and around and among them, swallows among the doves, not memories, but dreams. His heart clenches like a fist at the sight of them, the memories he will never have. The hardest thing about dying, he suddenly realizes, is that you don't really get to see the story's end – the way it will go on for those you love, the way they will keep speaking and thinking and aging and doing and sinning and triumphing, without you.

Dean will grow old, he thinks. If things go well. Dean will say things I will never hear.

For a moment, there in the orange yellow red green grove of the alder, the chapel of their branches and the stained glass of the slowly closing year, he allows himself to regret, fully, profoundly, and he wishes again for the calm reassurance of Heaven. For the lullabies of the stars, the comfort of moving through the gentle currents of reality, the pattern of the universe, letting him know that everything will be all right. His fingers clutch the bark of the tree, desperate for its atoms, for the hum of their inevitable attraction. I will never know this again, he thinks. I will never understand what I now understand. _Too big,_ he thinks. _Too much._

Just for a moment. Then a cloud lifts its train, dances a step to the west, and a thin trickle of brilliant sunlight finds him. Unable to fly out to meet the surging wavelengths that form all that there is, that tell him the shape and limit of his celestial form, that govern his joyous movements and his deepest sorrows, that echo the pounding surf of his heart, he turns his face sunward instead and gently, lovingly, mercifully, they come to him.

 

* * *

 

This is how it happens. One devil's trap, infused with angelic grace. One sheaf of notepaper, containing: one ancient Sumerian spell for protection and strengthening of a soul, one Latin incantation for Celestial benevolence and mercy (Castiel raised a dubious eyebrow but included it anyway), one Enochian benediction. Two vials of holy water, for aversion purposes, just in case. One broken shoulder, Sam's. Two dubiously working lungs, Castiel's. One Enochian containment spell, on outer surface of dungeon doors. Just in case. Four cups of coffee consumed, Sam. One glass of water partially consumed, Castiel. Five hours of sleep, Sam and Castiel combined. Unrelenting sleeplessness, Dean. Three churning brains. Three pounding hearts. One key for demonic manacles, Sam in possession. Thirty-three steps from the door to the edge of the trap. Three deep-ish breaths.

He steps inside the devil's trap.

Go time, huh? Dean says, derisive. Weary. Hopeful. All of the Deans.

Castiel says nothing, saving breath that is so difficult now to take, sucking pond scum through a straw. Face grey, the room having trouble, every so often, staying correctly oriented vis-a-vis up and down. Legs like lead, nauseated as the rest of him. These things he pushes aside. Reaches into the reserve of Hanna's grace like dipping a cupped hand into clean water. Lets it run free down the muscles and veins of his arm. Extends two fingers to Dean's bright face.

Now, Sam. He rasps.

The Mark howls. Dean's body thrashes, seizing. Sam launches into the Sumerian spell, loud, clear, quick. Grace leaps, rushing, bubbling, singing into Dean's brain, and up the veins of Castiel's arm tipping back his chin opening his lips, lighting up his eyes pushing out breath a soft “oh,” as it surges through dams and walls, as it seeks its own level, as it runs to meet its own kind that Castiel stitched into Dean's soul so long ago. Dean's soul, leaping like a fish on a hook like a wild bird in a cage.

Dean screams. Fuck you, he screams. Fuck you!

Sam's voice, louder, as the wires in the walls start to ring.

The Mark fights back with blood red rage, insane at the intrusion of that which it lost in a time before memory – the time before Time when angels dared to love humans for themselves, and were punished, torn away from the sweet singing Grace of Heaven and flung, crying out, shrieking in pain and betrayal and sorrow and fury into the Abyss, because they touched what they should not touch, because they coveted what they should not covet, because they loved what they should not love. The Mark remembers only the horrible empty gulf of that pain, and not that which it had before the pain. Because to remember is to know that loss again, and hatred is much easier than that. And in humanity, the desire for something winged and holy became couched in sin, allowed only to the priests and those who would keep themselves pure, and the Mark became a sign for the sin of envy, of lust in all its forms, of murder and jealousy and despair. And Cain slew Abel because of a hole inside of himself, because he saw the light of Heaven on Abel's face and thought him better-loved. And Lucifer uprooted Heaven because of a hole inside himself, because he saw the light of Heaven on the face of humanity and thought them better-loved.

And Dean felt himself unworthy of love, even the love he secretly held for himself, and tried to fill the holes with alcohol and sex and shooting things and dying multiple times and telling angels to go to hell, and with the blind red sweet lonely rage of the Mark.

Dean's soul spins wildly like a fish on a hook, like a bird in a cage, looking for a way out of this madness. _Don't be afraid_ , Castiel tells Dean's soul. _Remember._

Things to Tell Dean. Number one. Angels remember everything, except when they don't, and that's a rare occurrence that coincides with unspeakable torturing of the laws of the Universe. It can be done, but I don't recommend it. No one does. Not even the ones who do it. Except for Leviathan, I suppose, but as we have mutually discovered, they have excruciatingly bad taste in all things. What angels remember, we remember without error, and so all of the memories I give you are absolutely true. Like when you thought you had left me behind in Purgatory, when in fact, I told you to go. You tried to save me. You do not abandon the ones you love, Dean. That is a true thing.

The manacles are growing white-hot. Castiel is afraid they will burn Dean's skin. He throws the vial of holy water on them, one-handed. The Mark shrieks. Dean screams again. Within him, the tiny filaments of Castiel's grace begin to rise through the cracks to meet the tide.

At Dean's scream, Sam's voice falters, stumbling on the opening words of the Latin incantation.

Sam, Castiel says sternly.

Sam picks up the rhythm of the Latin now, and it smooths out, gaining speed and confidence like the purring of the Impala's engine.

Dean thrashes mightily against his chains.

Things to Tell Dean. Number two. There is no such thing as Destiny. No, not quite right: there is no such thing as a Destiny in which we do not have a say. Two parts probability, one part possibility. One part some Prophecy that someone thought up a long time ago and made just vague enough and just specific enough to keep on the right side of the Universe and all its chaotic machinations. One part pure, unadulterated, messy Free Will. You know this is true; you and Sam are a pair of the greatest living examples. What you _don't_ believe is true is that this also applies in the microcosm. You, Dean, are not destined to be alone, broken, unhappy, tormented. You threw off the shackles of Heaven's Prophecy, now throw off the shackles of your own.

Castiel's legs are beginning to shake. The electricity shrieks in the walls, Sam shouts above it the words of the Enochian blessing.

_You, soul, most beloved of God..._

The Mark wails. Dean's body flails in the bonds, fish caught on a line. Castiel feels his soul reaching, just like that day in Hell, reaching, get me out of here, it seems to say, this is crazy, this is nuts, I wanna go home. Not yet, Castiel tells it gently. You must abide here a little while longer. With effort, he gathers strength, buoyed by the grace, grace like a river running in joy to the sea, and touches the soul he carried within him out of Hell. And the Mark snaps the manacles that bind Dean to the chair.

A few things happen nearly all at once: Dean's body jerks upright and he is suddenly chest to chest with Castiel as the Mark cries out for its companion, the dark, sharp, bloody thing that waits in the ether of darkness to be called; Sam finishes the Enochian and starts again with the Sumerian, louder now over the sound of wind howling down through the skylight far, far overhead and wires sizzling and popping; the First Blade, summoned, stutters into stark existence in Dean's outstretched hand. The grace from Hanna, racing, throbbing, roiling, roaring, meets the grace from Castiel buried deep within Dean. The lights all blow out. The fan, finally overwhelmed, lets go its questionable moorings in the cement of the ceiling and comes crashing down. The air is filled with a coruscating light as brilliant as a horizonless ocean, rippling past the corners of reality, filling every crevasse of the world with light and water forever. The Mark, in a last paroxysm of wrath, burns a fiery trail down Dean's straining arm, and drives the First Blade deep into Castiel's body.

 

* * *

 

_You, soul, most beloved._

Things to Tell Dean. I am sorry I left you alone in Purgatory for so long. What can I say for myself? What I told you by the river was true. But what I didn't tell you was how afraid I was. How much I longed to return to you, each time you prayed. I think it might have been even more painful than dying, though I haven't completed the process quite yet so I'm not certain.

Are they standing together by the sea of light, or is it that the sea is within them? Everything is suffused with that bright-soft aura but he can't see anything else. A hand is in his, he thinks, somewhere far away.

Cas!

I'm here, he says. I'm with you.

Soul swimming, soul leaping, glittering in the waves of light. Soul circling him, fish bird spirit, drawing itself around him like a sigil. Cas!

Come here, he breathes but breathing is very hard in that other place, lungs a wet red gurgle, losing a battle very slowly to a tide of red. Come closer. Don't be afraid.

Never been afraid of you, Cas. Even when I was.

Things to Tell Dean. How it starts. How an angel sent to rescue a Righteous Man from Hell sees before him seven paths, seven tactical decisions. How he is told, go for the one on the mountain, that one's closer, that one's not, you know,  _currently being turned into a torture machine by one of Hell's biggest, meanest demons._ But he doesn't head for the one on the mountain. Why? No one knows why. No one, maybe, will ever know why. Because air pressure, wind direction, alignment of the stars and planets. Because he really wants to kick Alistair in the face. Because a bright slice of green in the greys blacks browns reds, reds, reds of Hell catches his eye. Because you looked like  _you_ , which meant you never really thought you belonged in Hell.

Do you remember?

Do you remember now?

The light sighs around them, soul pressing close, soul taking Castiel's face in its hands, how did they get so big, those hands? Castiel is far greater than the soul is, but here now somehow he is small, as though they've switched places for a moment, Castiel curled against Dean's chest, rock rock rocking of the low-singing sea, breathing in the wild salt-air scent of death. Let me tell you how it happens, he murmurs, Let me -

Dean says, Yes.

And he sees yellow green summers, chasing Sammy in borrowed ballfields; sees a lake where they fished almost all autumn; sees Dean's dappled skin bathed in nothing but light, warm in the sun slanting in through a motel window; sees himself, crackling electric thing standing so close. Sees futures and pasts – Dean and Sam driving to an old house in Georgia, magnolias heavy on the trees as a Black woman comes out shaking her head then smiling reluctantly – Dean teaching Sammy to drive – hands chasing each other across wild naked skin, Dean and a girl, his breath catching nervously – Dean and himself, side by side on the Impala's hood under a glittering spray of stars – growing older – his own vessel's smile, through Dean's eyes, bringing with it a surge of secret warmth and happiness – a battered trench coat neatly folded in the trunk of a car – rain shimmering in dark hair, in sandy hair, on eyelashes as they kiss – doors of an old rotten barn splintering open as the wind howls and the lights blow out and an angel walks in - sees Dean's most treasured hidden hopes and dreams, his long-agos and his maybes, floating around them like leaves on the wind.

Things to Tell Dean.

I love you.

He gives Dean all of his memories, the whole story, out of order, saving the beginning for last: a hanging tower in Hell, a rush of wings, a Dean who looks like Dean, gazing up at him and trusting Castiel to save him.

Things to Tell Dean: you were the best choice I ever made.

_Cas._

The interwoven strands of themselves, blue green gold silver, folding unfolding, between them knowing every atom of the story, between them discovering the hidden meaning in each moment, sparkling up at them like bright clear stones from the river, the ones that you find, smiling with wonder, one then another then another until you look behind you and realize that the entire shore is glittering like diamond – they breathe once together in that mysterious knowing, that simple happiness, and as the last rays of sun touch the side of the earth on which they are kneeling, they part.

The grace rushes out to the ocean, joyful, laughing, tumbling. Castiel can feel it tugging on him, breaking him gently apart, and the leaping soul is being left further and further behind, until it is just a glimmer in the sea of light, but a glimmer that he would know anywhere, forever – singular stone among stones, precious grain among grains of sand, the one to which he will whisper Don't Be Afraid and impart the last unending breath of his love as the tide carries him out, out, out beyond the veil of all the wondering stars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> "O Magnum Mysterium," arr. Morten Lauridsen, found [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn5ken3RJBo)


End file.
